APRIL 2012 - AudioFile
THE DARLINGS are the darlings of New York, well educated, rich, philanthropic, beautiful, and successful. That is, until the Thanksgiving weekend when beloved Uncle Mortie, whose mysterious investment firm delivers worryingly consistent 12 percent returns every year, disappears off the Tappan Zee Bridge, leaving Carter Darling’s investment business holding empty bags. Cristina Alger knows this New York world cold and makes a tightly plotted, richly satisfying meal of it with characters you understand and believe in, whether you like them or not. Jonathan Fried performs thoughtfully and persuasively, never overplaying and only rarely getting in the way. B.G. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
Two parts Too Big to Fail, one part The Devil Wears Prada, Alger’s debut is taut and compelling. The recession-era Manhattan elite are bruised and a touch less confident than in their heyday, but the summer homes, charity balls, and general extravagance persist—and the titular family is still riding high. Alger’s portrayal of the magnetic Darlings is convincing, particularly that of Paul Ross. Married to the eldest Darling daughter, he’s a self-made man forced to take refuge in the employ of his father-in-law’s hedge fund. What unfolds, amid all the character building, is a well-constructed Madoffian financial scandal, with Alger leaning on her knowledge (she is a graduate of NYU Law School and a former analyst for Goldman, Sachs) for verisimilitude that only occasionally overwhelms. Though the plot is bogged down by a secondary cast who come to drive the drama, sophisticated central characterizations make this novel well worth the time; Alger expertly evokes both sympathy and contempt for her characters and writes with a polished ease, telling the story of our time (or a particular glittery, corrupt corner of our time) with a mix of ruthlessness and sensitivity. Agent: McCormick & Williams. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
Praise for The Darlings
“Alger’s novel is a realist fiction that marks the revival of the finance novel today....Never before have stories seemed more important. It’s one of the virtues of Alger’s novel that it brings this point home to us—from finance, into fiction. And (hopefully) back.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Alger, who has worked at Goldman Sachs as well as at a white-shoe law firm, knows her way around 21st-century wealth and power, and she tells a suspenseful, twisty story.”—Wall Street Journal
“What happens to the Darling family in the course of a weekend is what carries this tale along, but it’s Alger’s description of quintessential New Yorkers, and how they survive, that adds the extra layer....Alger has what it takes, in the best sense of the phrase.”—USA Today
“Forget Gossip Girl: If you really want a peek into the scandalous lives of New York City's elite upper class, Alger's debut novel—set during the financial downturn of 2008—gets you pretty close....The Darlings moves so fast that it feels more like a thriller than a social drama.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Penned by a former banker, this is a dishy yet thoughtful portrait of greed gone too far...A page-turner.”—Good Housekeeping
“Two parts Too Big to Fail, one part The Devil Wears Prada, Alger’s debut is taut and compelling.”—Publishers Weekly
“Probably the most compulsively readable fiction to come out of the Wall Street financial scandal so far....Alger knows the ins and outs of both Wall Street and an upscale NYC lifestyle, nailing all the details...Delicious reading.”—Booklist
“A financial thriller with a tone that fits somewhere between the novels of Dominick Dunne...and Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities.”—Library Journal
“Cristina Alger is so good, you just know she’s an inside trader—as intimately familiar with the inner workings of Wall Street investment banks as she is with haute Manhattan social life. She’s also a gifted storyteller. The Darlings is an utterly compelling novel, as knowing about family as it is about money and social status, and may be the best literary product of the financial crisis to date.”—Jay McInerney, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Life
“For those who have only gazed up at the palatial residences of Manhattan, this is a glimpse from the penthouse down.”—Tom Rachman, New York Times bestselling author of The Imperfectionists
“Cristina Alger’s debut novel offers a fresh and modern glimpse into New York’s high society. I was hooked from page one.”—Lauren Weisberger, New York Times bestselling author of Last Night at the Chateau Marmont
“A rare, glittering glimpse into Manhattan’s banks, bedrooms, and private clubs, a material and psychological world rendered with extraordinary detail. A smart, gripping tale...complex and mesmerizing.”—Sarah Houghteling, author of Pictures at an Exhibition
“Cristina Alger has written a racing, vivid, multi-vocal chronicle of the new gilded age, with equal shades of Jay McInerney and Bernie Madoff. Start reading it and in three hundred pages or so you'll feel like a consummate New York insider, too.”—Charles Finch, author of A Burial at Sea
The Wall Street Journal
Alger, who has worked at Goldman Sachs as well as at a white-shoe law firm, knows her way around 21st-century wealth and power, and she tells a suspenseful, twisty story.
USA Today
Alger has written one of the first novels about the 2008 financial crisis, saying she wanted to get into the ‘hearts and minds' of the people who had a front-row seat on the world-changing crisis. She succeeds. What happens to the Darling family in the course of a weekend is what carries this tale along, but it's Alger's description of quintessential New Yorkers, and how they survive, that adds the extra layer. . . . Alger has what it takes, in the best sense of the phrase.
Library Journal
Alger's debut tracks a single week in the fortunes, or, rather, misfortunes, of the Darlings, a pedigreed Manhattan family whose lavish lifestyle depends on the positive performance of Delphic, their financial investment firm. All goes awry when Morty Reis, a family friend and Delphic's most successful fund manager, tosses himself off the Tappan Zee Bridge. Unfortunately for son-in-law Paul Ross, this terrible event happens around the time of his signing on as the firm's legal counsel and the receipt of pointed phone calls from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He begins to suspect that Morty had engaged in fraudulent schemes that will bring down the family. Will Paul be pulled into the moral quagmire of a family cover-up, extricate himself by cooperating with the SEC and thereby lose his lovely wife, or be hung out to dry by the Darlings as the scapegoat? Throughout the novel, Alger introduces us to flawed but sympathetically drawn characters and depicts socialite parties, luscious dinners, exquisite clothes, and holidays in the Hamptons. VERDICT Alger, a former Goldman Sachs analyst and attorney, has written a financial thriller with a tone that fits somewhere between the novels of Dominick Dunne (though not as flippant) and Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities (though not as serious). [See Prepub Alert, 8/26/11.]—Sheila Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Lib., Washington, DC
APRIL 2012 - AudioFile
THE DARLINGS are the darlings of New York, well educated, rich, philanthropic, beautiful, and successful. That is, until the Thanksgiving weekend when beloved Uncle Mortie, whose mysterious investment firm delivers worryingly consistent 12 percent returns every year, disappears off the Tappan Zee Bridge, leaving Carter Darling’s investment business holding empty bags. Cristina Alger knows this New York world cold and makes a tightly plotted, richly satisfying meal of it with characters you understand and believe in, whether you like them or not. Jonathan Fried performs thoughtfully and persuasively, never overplaying and only rarely getting in the way. B.G. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
First-time novelist Alger brings previous careers in investment and law to bear in her financial thriller about a prominent Manhattan family of financiers brought down by scandal months after the stock-market crash. Carter Darling and his Brazilian wife Ines, a stereotypically shallow Upper East Side matron, are doyens of Manhattan society with two Spence educated daughters, pretty Lily and smart Merrill. Carter employs both his sons-in-law, preppy dullard Adrian and self-made lawyer Paul--Merrill's husband and the novel's more or less central character--at his hedge fund Delphic. The Darlings, including daughters and sons-in-law, live inside a tightly controlled bubble in which family is supposedly everything until Delphic's dealings come under the scrutiny of the New York office of the SEC. But the Darlings are not the Madoffs. They are aristocratic and "waspy" (an adjective Alger uses a lot). The Madoff stand-in is Morty Reis, a nouveau riche Jew who apparently commits suicide just before the SEC exposes that his management firm, a big part of Delphic's portfolio, has been running a massive ponzi scheme. Did anyone at Delphic know? Is someone going to have to take the fall? Is there other, more personal misconduct in danger of being exposed? Where do the fault lines of loyalty lie within this family? And how much does the family's concierge/lawyer, another nouveau riche Jew, know? While Alger builds suspense by tracking the family's disintegration in short scenes day by day by exact hour, from the Tuesday before Thanksgiving until the Monday after, she dissipates tension with a surfeit of financial chatter; the temperature never rises above tepid, even during sex scenes, and neither does the satiric heat. Merrill and Paul are portrayed as the innocent victim-heroes throughout, but it is hard to work up much sympathy--Paul has dropped his North Carolina family for no understandable reason except social climbing, and Merrill is a "waspy" snob and a possessive wife. A lukewarm financial thriller.
